Faanya Rose

Faanya became a member of the Explorers Club in 1994, and was elected director in 1998, and in 2000 by a vote of the board of directors became the first woman president. Her sponsors for membership were John Blashford-Snell and past Club president John Levinson, MD (1927–2009). Thor Heyerdahl, notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, was a strong advocate for her election to the board. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Faanya Rose became a British citizen in 1983. In 1986, she became group treasurer of British property development and investment company Hammerson plc. In 1988, she became group treasurer of British Airports Authority or BAA plc (now the privately held Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited), retiring from the firm in 1998. During her time at BAA she was special financial adviser to the London Ambulance Service.

Rose attended Johannesburg Girls Preparatory School of Barnato Park, in her time a school for young ladies. After graduation, she enrolled at University of the Witwatersrand. As an executive in London during the 1980s and 1990s, she pursued course work with the London Business School and the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Through the 1970s, Rhodesia became more and more dangerous. In January 1980, Faanya Rose immigrated to England. In April of that year when majority rule took effect, and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, her interests in the country were forfeit.

In 1965, Donald Goldin became general manager of the Victoria Falls Casino Hotel, and the family moved to Rhodesia. He became a naturalized Rhodesian citizen, and in the Rhodesian general election, 1977 he was elected a member of parliament, a voice in the Ian Smith government for greater black inclusion. He served less than his full term before dying at age 46 on Air Rhodesia Flight 827, a casualty of the Rhodesian Bush War.

Business brought Faanya Rose to Rhodesia in 1965. Her father Simon Arch agreed to finance the first casino for the country to be built in the township of Victoria Falls. He named Donald Goldin to oversee construction and manage day-to-day operations; Faanya was a contributing partner.

In her twenties, Faanya was a civilian observer of Operation Noah (1958–1964), the world's largest wildlife rescue from the flooding of the Kariba Gorge by the completion of the Kariba Dam. During her years in Rhodesia (1965–1979), she went on safari to hunt and on expeditions into the bush to observe animal habitat and the terrain. In 1993, she participated in an expedition to Tunisia to study the mosaics of Roman Africa sponsored by ASPROM (Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics). In 1994, she joined British expedition leader Colonel John Blashford-Snell of the Scientific Exploration Society (SES) on the "Great Elephant Quest" to investigate rumors that giant mammoths thought to be extinct were raiding Nepalese hunting grounds.

Rose was married in 1956 to South African Donald Goldin (1933–1979), an avid sportsman and businessman. They had three sons: Grant Joseph (born 1957), Malcolm Daniel (born 1961), and Andrew Saul (born 1972).

Faanya Lydia (Arch) Rose (born July 9, 1938) is a British-American businesswoman, conservationist, philanthropist, and explorer. She was the first woman and the first British citizen elected president of The Explorers Club.

Then Faanya met Robert Rose (1921–2009) in London in the early 1990s. He was a retired American entrepreneur, world traveler, and enthusiastic explorer. They married in 1993. Robert introduced his new wife to the Explorers Club by way of the Club's British Chapter. During her marriage to Rose, she established dual citizenship with the United States and Britain. He died at age 88.

Rose was born in Johannesburg when South Africa was a dominion of Great Britain. She is the oldest child of Cecilia "Cissie" Elizabeth Arch (née Wainer) (1909–1978) and Simon Arch (1910–1977), a diamond merchant and financier.

At founding in 1904, the membership of the Explorer Club was “limited absolutely to men who [had] been in the open and the wild places of the earth.” Women were not admitted until 1981, and would wait nineteen years before being considered for president. Faanya said of her election she wanted, "Not to be the first woman president, but to be the first woman to be the best man for the job."